Worker Bees Blog is where BlogHer co-founder Elisa Camahort Page muses about marketing, social media, customer service and other Web 2.0 inanities

Friday, November 03, 2006

This month's Silicon Veggie: The 30-Day Vegan Trial

This month's column chronicles my first 30 days as a Vegan...imperfections and all. Metro readers have always responded most strongly when I've written about my personal journey as a vegetarian and vegan, as opposed to pure restaurant reviews...even though this column lives in the Dining section of the paper.

Hmmm. I think there's a blogging analogy in there.

I often tell this story:

Over at my HealthyConcerns blog i try to tell the healthcare related stories of people I know and even just people I meet. I also talk about the politics and controversies around health insurance issues. At times this blog has been highly active, although over the last few months my posting has slowed to unacceptable levels (if I expect to cultivate an active, engaged readership, I mean.)

I would often get commentary, and often from other medbloggers who read my blog, from doctors to insurance folks.

But when I published my own stories about my own health issues, most notably the issue of whether coughing up green phlegm requires a visit to the doctor, all of a sudden real, live people came out of the woodwork to comment...give me advice, tell their own stories etc. etc.

Kathy Klotz-Guest and I will be co-presenting at the NewComm Forum this coming March about Storytelling and Blogging (or some other panel name TBD.) She has done research and has all sorts of supporting data about the power of narrative for business blogs. I'm going to talk about green phlegm.